About Me

100 years ago, on 19 March, 1911, the first big demonstration for women’s rights took place in Vienna. On that day, about 20,000 people – the majority of them women – marched along the Ring Boulevard to the City Hall. Their stated aims were: the universal suffrage for women, labour protection laws, the protection of mothers and children, the 8-hour working day, equal payment for equal work, a reduction of food prices, the introduction of a social insurance, the legalisation of abortion and the prevention of the First World War already looming on the horizon. In the same year, similar demonstrations took place in Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and the USA.

The initiative for an annual International Women’s Day came from Clara Zetkin, who had introduced a motion to this end at the Second International Socialist Women’s Conference in Copenhagen in 1910. This was to become the beginning of a militant women’s tradition which on 8 March every year – the International Women’s Day – takes into the public the political and social concerns of women.

Today, 100 years later, many of the rights demanded then are realized, some are being questioned again, others have not even been met yet, while many new demands and visions have arisen.
We know that – in spite of all differences between us – we must not permit that we are divided if we want to unfold power as a joint movement. Therefore it holds true for us what already Audre Lorde, a Black American feminist, said in 1984, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”

Being a woman must not entail leading a life of disadvantages. Living as a woman means to have different ideas of the world than the dominant ones.

We want to live in a world in which
• women participate in decisions in all fields of society and politics as a matter-of-course
• women and men possess equally much money and power
• women are not reduced to our role as mothers
• motherhood is no poverty trap
• women are not kept so poor that we are forced to enter relationships of dependence violating our dignity and working conditions harmful to our health
• girls and women know our her-story and are informed about the achievements of other women
• all people have unlimited access to education and in which living and working conditions prevail which make this possible

We want to live in a world in which
• women’s work counts as much as men’s work and unpaid work is not automatically women’s work
• women and men take equal responsibility for earning incomes, looking after children, doing house and care work and in which the entire society feels responsible for the welfare of children
• all people have a right to existential security
• unemployment cannot be used as a threat and in which labour-law standards are met
• everybody has enough time to recover from work, to develop our intellectual and creative potential and to live satisfying relationships
• being human does not only mean to function or to consume

We want to live in a world in which
• women are protected against male violence
• women’s bodies are not used as objects in advertisements
• women are not incessantly exposed to the dictate of the beauty and fashion industries
• we may love who we want and live together with whom we want without being discriminated against for that
• nobody is questioning our right to decide if and how many children we want to give birth to

We want to live in a world in which
• education, art and culture are understood as basic needs to the satisfaction of which all people are entitled to independent of their gender, colour of skin, age, geographic or social origin
• patriarchal cultural history is in education and arts critically examined and re-written
• contemporary art is funded with the same resources as traditional art so that female artists and cultural workers get access to all levels

We want to live in a world in which
• members of other cultures are respected as a matter-of-course and racism, anti-Semitism and devaluation of other cultures are not permitted to happen
• women’s rights = human rights are respected and their knowledge is part of the job specifications for politicians
• people are protected against discrimination and badgering and the political practices of detention, expulsion and deportation following from that
• the co-existence of people of different origins is experienced as enriching and in which nobody is illegalised

We want to live in a world in which
• the production of arms, wars and invasions in other countries belong to the past
• not all three seconds a child dies because the countries of the North have for centuries been plundering those of the South
• the profit interests of multinational companies and the finance economy do not determine the lives of all of us
• our lives are not left to be ruled by the fluctuations of economic growth and stock market prices
• international solidarity is being practiced
• everything is done to counteract the climate change and in which the resources of the earth are handled with care instead of being wasted

To make this world more to our world, we walk out into the streets and call on all women to join in.
Let’s set a signal for women’s rights!
Another world is possible!